Why should I use quotation marks for phrase searching?

In general, we recommend that you don't search for long phrases in library databases. But, sometimes you do need to find an exact phrase (2 or more words together), an exact title, or quotation. 

It's easy to tell the databases to search for phrases: 

In the search box, just type quotation marks (" ") around the phrase that you need to find. This will tell the database (or search engine -- this works in Google, too!) that you want it to find the words you typed exactly as you've typed them. It will narrow your search, and filter out a lot of irrelevant results.